Senate Votes Va To Cabinet

WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted on Tuesday to elevate the Veterans Administration to the Department of Veterans Affairs, making it the 14th Cabinet department in the federal government.

Reflecting the lobbying power of the veterans` organizations, and despite the doubts of some senators that a Cabinet-level agency would be beneficial to veterans, the Senate approved the bill, 84-11.

The House passed a similar bill last fall, 399-17, and President Reagan has said he will sign the measure. A Senate-House conference panel will work out the technical differences between the two bills and the compromise will go to both houses for final passage.

Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin was the only Democrat to join 10 Republicans who voted against the measure. The Republicans were William L. Armstrong of Colorado, Daniel J. Evans of Washington, James A. McClure and Steve Symms of Idaho, Dan Quayle of Indiana, Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas, Gordon J. Humphrey and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, Jake Garn of Utah and Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that elevating the VA to Cabinet status will cost $4 million a year at the outset, rising to $11 million a year by 1993. The current budget of the Veterans Administration is $29 billion, largely for payment of $16 billion in benefits to 3.9 million living veterans and veterans` survivors.

The last Cabinet addition was that of the Department of Education in 1979, in the Carter term.

As a candidate in 1980, Reagan pledged to abolish the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, but he is likely to leave office with one more department than when he started.

The Senate did pass a separate bill earlier in the day granting veterans a severely limited scope of judicial review. The measure would lower the barriers to court appeals that have been defended by the Veterans Administration itself, by most veterans` organziations and by the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. G.V. ``Sonny`` Montgomery, D-Miss.

The Senate bill contains language, not included in the House version, that Sen. John Glenn of Ohio, said would ``insure that the department has the kind of management structure needed for the future.``